Borrowing from Digby’s post yesterday where Stephen Denning says “the war on terror has been a war in error,” I’ve developed a few questions for the President … just to let him know what’s on my mind:
1. Have you done enough to fight errorism?
2. Do you really believe the War In Error is winnable?
3. Some say that global errorism has increased dramatically under your watch. Would you agree?
Joe was adamant in the debate tonight that Iraq has shown great progress over the last two years. I guess it depends on what you call progress:
The central morgue said Tuesday that it received 1,595 bodies last month, 16 percent more than in May, in a tally that showed the pace of killing here has increased since the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq.
Baghdad, home to one-fourth of Iraq’s population, has slowly descended into a low-grade civil war in some neighborhoods, with Sunni and Shiite militias carrying out systematic sectarian killings that clear whole city blocks.
[…]
The American ambassador here, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, told the BBC on Tuesday that killing Mr. Zarqawi had not made Iraq safer.
“In terms of the level of violence, it has not had any impact at this point,” Mr. Khalilzad said. “As you know, the level of violence is still quite high.”
The morgue, which takes bodies from Baghdad and its outskirts, offers a rough measure of the violence. The toll for last month, provided by the morgue deputy, who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the news media, was roughly double the 879 bodies the morgue received in June 2005.
American officials say civilians bear the brunt of the killing, representing 70 percent of all deaths.
Except for all the dead bodies, things are going really well.
The reason Lieberman admires and supports George W. Bush so much is because they share an important, temperamental characteristic: neither of them can admit when they are wrong.
I’m listening to the Lieberman-Lamont debate and if I were just tuning in with no knowledge of the players I would just assume that Lieberman was a conservative Republican, if not an actual member of the Bush administration. He’s behaving like an arrogant, bullying thug.
No wonder the Republicans love him so much — the only time he gets nasty is when he’s debating a Democrat. When he debated Dick Cheney he practically gave him a blow job on national TV. But then, that makes sense. He and Dick Cheney both agree that Ned Lamont “and his supporters” are a threat to the nation.
Update:
On a more serious note, it is truly remarkable that Lieberman continues to voice support for Bush’s hawkish foreign policy. In fact, it’s delusional. As Kevin Drum wrote today:
…the Bush administration literally seems to have no foreign policy at all anymore. They have no serious plan for Iraq, no plan for Iran, no plan for North Korea, no plan for democracy promotion, no plan for anything. With the neocons on the outs, Condoleezza Rice at the State Department, and Dick Cheney continuing to drift into an alternate universe at the OVP, the Bush administration seems completely at sea. There’s virtually no ideological coherency to their foreign policy that I can discern, and no credible followup on what little coherency is left.
There is nothing to lose by Democrats running against this ridiculous cabal of incompetents. Yet Lieberman arrogantly criticizes those who call him on his inflexible loyalty to a failed, ill-advised strategy. What a putz.
Isn’t just wierd that whenever there’s a close election these days that the right wing always comes out on top? Now, why would that be do you suppose?
It used to be commonplace for Mexican elections to be rigged and so I guess i’m not all that surprised that this one was. What’s odd are the striking similarities between it and the recently “disputed” elections here in the US. This is just spooky:
Ruling party officials said Mr. Lopez Obrador had the lead earlier only because more votes had been counted in areas where he was strongest. They also accused the candidate’s Democratic Revolution Party of stalling tactics in states where Mr. Calderon was strongest, saying it was deliberately trying to give the impression that Mr. Lopez Obrador was ahead as the count progressed.
On Wednesday, Mr. Lopez Obrador threatened to ignore the final tally because of “serious evidence of fraud.” Leonel Cota, president of the Democratic Revolution Party, accused election officials of deliberately mishandling the preliminary vote count Sunday to confirm a win for Mr. Calderon. He said Mr. Lopez Obrador won Sunday’s vote.
“We are not going to recognize an election that showed serious evidence of fraud, that was dirty from the start, manipulated from the start,” he said.
His party has claimed that more than 18,000 polling places had more votes cast than there were ballots and nearly 800 had more votes than there were registered voters.
When polls closed Sunday, citizens staffing the 130,488 polling places opened the ballot boxes and counted the votes, then sealed them into packages and attacked a report. The electoral institute then posted preliminary results on its website from about 41 million ballots cast.
The sealed packages were delivered to district headquarters, where election workers used the tallies Wednesday to add up the formal, legal vote totals.
Workers were not reviewing individual ballots except when the packages appeared tampered with or their tallies were missing, illegible or inconsistent.
Has anybody seen Jim Baker? How do you say “divaaaahning the will ‘o the voter” in spanish?
One of the lesser known aspects of this latest serendipitous right wing squeaker election, is the US involvement. Greg Palast uncovered some intriguing evidence that we are back in the interfering in Latin American politics business — in the name of terrorism, of course:
The target nations for “foreign counterterrorism investigation” were nowhere near the Persian Gulf. Every one was in Latin America — Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico and a handful of others.
Latin America?! Was there a terror cell about to cross into San Diego with exploding enchiladas?
All the target nations had one thing in common besides a lack of terrorists: each had a left-leaning presidential candidate or a left-leaning president in office. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, bete noir of the Bush Administration, was facing a recall vote. In Mexico, the anti-Bush Mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was (and is) leading the race for the Presidency.
Most provocative is the contractor to whom this no-bid contract was handed: ChoicePoint Inc. of Alpharetta, Georgia. ChoicePoint is the database company that created a list for Governor Jeb Bush of Florida of voters to scrub from voter rolls before the 2000 election. ChoicePoint’s list (94,000 names in all) contained few felons. Most of those on the list were guilty of no crime except Voting While Black. The disenfranchisement of these voters cost Al Gore the presidency.
Having chosen our President for us, our President’s men chose ChoicePoint for this sweet War on Terror database gathering. The use of the Venezuela’s and Mexico’s voter registry files to fight terror is not visible — but the use of the lists to manipulate elections is as obvious as the make-up on Katherine Harris’ cheeks.
[…]
In Venezuela, leading up to the August 2004 vote on whether to re-call President Chavez, I saw his opposition pouring over the voter rolls in laptops, claiming the right to challenge voters as Jeb’s crew did to voters in Florida. It turns out this operation was partly funded by the International Republican Institute of Washington, an arm of the GOP. Where did they get the voter info from?
In that case, access to Venezuela’s voter rolls didn’t help the Republican-assisted drive against Chavez, who won by a crushing plurality.
[…]
Foreign — that is, American — interference in political campaigns is a crime. That didn’t stop Team Bush. However, when the theft of its citizen files was discovered, Argentina threatened to arrest ChoicePoint contractors until the company returned the tapes — and Mexico’s attorney general did in fact arrest the ChoicePoint data thieves to avoid his party from looking too much the stooge of its Washington patron. Whether George Bush gave back his copy, no one will say.
I don’t know if this Choicepoint thing helped the PAN steal the Mexican election but it certainly looks as if it’s another case of “you’d better win by a huge margin because if it’s close enough to steal, the right will steal it.”
In an interesting post over at op-ed news, Stephen Denning, an author and lecturer on the subject of narrative and leadership writes the following:
What’s the story that the new leaders will need to communicate? In broad outline, we know what it will be, both for Democrats and Republicans, since as Robert Reich has explained, there are only four stories in American politics:
· The Triumphant Individual. This is the familiar tale of the little guy who works hard, takes risks, believes in himself, and eventually gains wealth, fame, and honor. Although the Democrats, given their alliance with labor, used to own this story, the Republicans took it over by offering lower taxes. After six years of profligate spending, that won’t win this argument much longer. The winning narrative for both Republicans and Democrats must recognize that without resolving the crises in health and education, the economic future is bleak and there will be no triumphant individual.
· The Benevolent Community: “I have a dream,” said Martin Luther King Jr and JFK asked us what we could do for our country. Democrats used to own this issue until they became associated with failed poverty programs and handouts for the poor. Now Republicans are also in trouble as Katrina showed the unattractive reality of “compassionate conservatism” at home and the trashing of our allies has left America despised abroad. The winning narrative for both Democrats and Republicans here must obviously re-establish competence in coping with poverty and deprivation at home, while rekindling a spirit of internationalism abroad to solve global problems.
· The Mob at the Gates used to be the Nazis and then the Soviet evil empire. Now it’s terrorists, against whom we must maintain vigilance, lest diabolical forces overwhelm us. In recent times, Republicans have owned this story, but as disillusion with Iraq deepens and broadens, both Republicans and Democrats will have to recognize that the war on terror has been a war in error, and will need to wind down the misguided adventure in Iraq, sooner rather than later, so that energies and resources can refocused on real enemies.
· The Rot at the Top: Since the other three stories are usually so similar for both parties, the “rot at the top” story is usually the pivotal one in leading to change. With Richard Nixon, it was political malfeasance. With George H.W. Bush, it was economic incompetence. With Clinton, it was personal immorality. Now Democrats have abundant evidence that Republicans embody a culture of incompetence and corruption, while Republicans try to paint Democrats as divided, effete, liberal, pro-gay and anti-marriage and opposed to God.
I’m not persuaded by his analysis of how the parties use these narratives. But for the sake of argument, I will accept the notion that these are the four narratives of American politics. If that is so, then it’s clear to me that the modern Republicans have always used “The Mob At The Gates” very effectively — commies/negroes/liberals are the internal mob and commies/mexicans/terrorists are the external mob. But they also use “The Triumphant Individual” very well, by making the claim that it’s government that is preventing people from getting rich. Support the Republicans and you will gain “wealth, fame, and honor.”
In fact, in terms of modern politics, if you look at the “Mob At the Gates” and the “Triumphant Individual” you see that they are temperamentally conservative, and contain both a positive and negative message. “The Benevolent Community” and “Rot at the Top” are much more obviously liberal narratives and also contain both a positive and negative message. (The right does use “rot at the top” as part of their “mob at the gates” fulminating about liberals, but it’s a little bit strained.)
The problem is that I haven’t seen liberals present those narratives very effectively in years. Perhaps the problems stems from the muddling of the message during the 80’s and 90’s when the leadership decided to try third way politics. Third Way doesn’t fit into any established narrative and people didn’t know what to make of it.
I actually believe in this narrative thing to some extent. I think the human race has been shaped by stories and I think our minds are conditioned to see things in narrative terms. If it’s true that there exist only four stories in American politics, and if my surmise is correct that they naturally fall into the two warring political tribes, then that’s where the Democrats have failed and where the Republicans have succeeded.
Perhaps it’s less important to come up with that pithy little list of “what we believe” than it is to think about how we can effectively tell our story of Benevolent Community and Rot At The Top to the American people.(I’d bet we could slide in a little “Triumphant Individual” in there too.) It’s quite clear the other side is dancing and singing their hearts out while we are presenting dry power-point presentations of our latest awesome 12 point plan.
It’s not that the Dems aren’t trying. Our latest slogan is all Benevolent Community: Together, America Can Do Better. It’s just that it sucks.
The next time somebody asks you about what the blogosphere really means to politics, pull this out:
The great benefit of the blogosphere is that it isn’t really an “interest group”; it’s more like an old-style membership organization (or a series of such organizations) whose existence used to do something to check what’s now become the out-of-control influence of business groups over the policy process.
That’s from Matt Yglesias. He’s responding to a post from Noam Schieber examining whether the blogosphere is a good thing, on balance, as its influence starts to crowd out the influence of liberal interest groups. Yglesias nicely analyzes that notion and I tend to agree with what he says, although I think the Republican coalition offers some lessons in how interest groups and a strong partisan identity can work fairly comfortably together.
Scheiber’s post suggests that the problem with the netroots is that we are going to make the party more liberal and that means we will lose elections. That would be the conventional diagnosis of what is wrong with the Democrats generally and it’s been the conventional wisdom as long as I can remember, at least since 1968. Yet, somehow, the society itself has become much more liberal. It’s true that the politics of the day seem extremely conservative, but if you look back at the way people really thought and spoke 40 years ago, you’ll see that this country was unrecognizably intolerant and thatwhile the unions were much more powerful and the middle class was still growing, the workplace was inhospitable to at least half the population.
Yglesias explains it this way, and I think it’s very astute:
I generally doubt that systemic social change will radically alter election outcomes since I tend to believe that the parties will more or less alternate in power — the important issue is the terms of debate between the two parties, and I think that insofar as the netroots become more influential (which I think is a fairly open question) the aggregate impact will be positive.
This is where the modern conservative movement has had its great impact: the terms of the debate. Progress marches on — or, at least, it has so far. Despite the most conservative political era in a century (maybe ever) the basic idea of extending rights to all, of opening the work force to all comers, to liberalizing society in general has continued, at least in fits and starts. But as an example of the terms of the political debate changing, where once it was considered natural to tax the rich more for the common good, the conservatives have managed to convince a good number of people that the common good is served by rich people keeping as much money as possible so they can “create jobs.”
Democrats have spent the last two decades trying to adapt to that change in the debate, sometimes out of a sincere desire to experiment with new ways of doing things, which is a liberal trait. But it was often a failure of imagination and fundamental commitment, as well. And in the end the DLC experiment failed liberalism. Trying to solely use capitalistic methods and modern business techniques to supplant government functions to solve problems has resulted in corrupt politics, inefficient government and huge income inequality. (Let’s not pretend that the plan wasn’t terribly tempting because of the vast sums of money that would flow from tapping into business and industry.)As Yglesias points out, the Netroots may just provide a needed counter weight to that system by challenging some of the plainly illiberal policies that have become so ingrained in the establishment that politicians today seem stunned that their constituents are objecting. (The bankruptcy bill comes to mind.)
But there is more to it, I think, than just counterweight against the influence of business, although I think that’s vastly important. I have described this current political stalemate before as a tug of war rather than a pendulum. Liberals let go of the rope for a while and failed to pull their weight in the debate. Without them — us — being there, helping to shape the debate (which sometimes means we are here to be triangulated against, btw) politics and society become out of wack as they clearly are now.
Conservatives benefit from their appeals to fear. It’s actually the very essence of conservatism — fear of change. And that is their weakness because in a democratic, capitalistic society optimism and a willingness and ability to risk are necessary for the society to thrive. Liberals’ job is to articulate that optimism, that belief that problems can be solved, that democratic government of the people is a positive force that provides the necessary structure for individuals and businesses to thrive and grow. It is that general sense of liberalism that the netroots, as a loosly affiliated organization of activists, thinkers, businesspeople, gadflys and interested observers might also bring back into the public debate.
We could potentially provide the ballast to the conservative political machine that has pulled the debate too far over to its side and created this nauseating sense of political instability. I think the country would welcome a little equilibrium (and by that I don’t mean a continuation of the 50/50 political stalemate.) We function better when society and politics are more in synch than they are now. And since progress is marching on as always, liberal politics are what’s necessary to end the cognitive dissonance.
Boxer is one of the Senators who, we now see, will be campaigning for Lieberman (second link, above). So the shock she experienced at YearlyKos propelled her away from the candidate they are pushing (Ned Lamont), and caused her to become especially conspicuous in her support for Lieberman.
Barbara Boxer has been the most vociferous supporter of women’s rights in the US Senate. Can it be true that she is going to stump for Joe Lieberman because she is so turned off by Ned Lamont’s pro-choice supporters? I hope not. Ned Lamont’s allegedly extremist pro-choice supporters include Planned Parenthood and NARAL, not to mention 78% of the Connecticut electorate who support the bill that would have made it mandatory for hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims — and which Joe Lieberman opposed.
Perhaps you could call and ask if she really thinks that taxpayers should support hospitals that would make rape victims drive all over Connecticut to get emergency contraception because of their absurd belief that birth control is immoral. And while you’re at it, ask her how a Democrat like Joe Lieberman, who endorses this, can really be considered a supporter of women’s rights?
You can call her office in DC at 202-224-3553, Sacramento at 916-448-2787, or email her here.
Like I said yesterday, torturing people has no relationship to keeping this country secure. But a decent computer system for the FBI sure as tootin’ does.
If they do an autopsy, I wonder if they’ll find that spot where the brain stores its delusions: the money, the country club, the cruises, the jets, church, the board of directors, aspen, fame, prominence, self-righteousness, self-importance. In this case, that spot would be the size of Montana. It’s no wonder his heart exploded.
Americans who get their propaganda from Fox “News” or are told what to think by right-wing talk radio hosts are outraged at news reports that U.S. troops planned and carried out the rape and murder of a young Iraqi woman. They are not outraged that the troops committed the deed; they are outraged that the media reported it. These “conservatives,” who proudly wear their patriotism on their sleeves, dismiss the reports of the incident as a Big Lie floated by “the anti-American liberal media” in order to demoralize Americans and reduce public support for the war.
Playing to this audience, Col. Jeffrey Snow, a U.S. brigade commander in Baghdad, told AFP News that news coverage could cause the U.S. to lose the war. In other words, what we are doing in Iraq cannot stand the light of day, so reporters must not report or the word will get out.
Many Bush supporters believe that truth is not on our side and must be suppressed. Yet, they support a war that is too shameful to report.
This story is haunting me because it comes on the heels of that earlier story about the song Hadji Girl. Remember?
I guess it’s the cavalier killing of Iraqi girls in that song that gets me. Iraq is not a culture of strong female fighters. Women are kept down. I haven’t seen any evidence that they are being used to plant IED’s and there has only been a couple of occasions where a suicide bomber was female in my recollection. Women are being repressed in this new regime. There is little reason to see them as the enemy. And yet, those guys in the Hadji video are laughing and hooting uproariously at the death of these girls. They seem to have bought in to the conservative Muslim view that women are male property and any humiliation of them or their person is an insult to males. (Or maybe they just get off on killing women, I don’t know.) Are these guys really that close to their lizard brains?
Now I know that rape has often been a common feature of war. But this isn’t really a war in the classical sense. It’s a hybrid war/occupation/police action/whatever and it seems to me that there is something quite sick about all the psychosexual aspects of it generally. From Gitmo to Abu Ghraib to this horrible rape and killing, it seems to me that there is a very strong desire on the part of Americans to sexualize and feminize the enemy. Maybe it’s always been this way. I’m no expert. I can’t help but remember Rush Limbaugh’s reaction to the Abu Ghraib scandal; he was so excited that “the babes” were meting out the torture and he clearly thinks forced sexual humiliation as all in good fun. There is just something very odd about all this. I wonder if someone is studying it.
Meanwhile, here at home, its pure ostrich time on the right. Don’t tell them what’s actually going on over there, don’t show us any returning dead, don’t make them see the wounded. They’re waiting for the Mel Gibson movie in which only the blood of ruthless terrorists were spilled as our brave soldiers fought them there so they wouldn’t have to fight them here. Pass the popcorn.